Flash Video 01 May 2006 12:38 pm
ABC.com introduces new Flash Player 8-based video player for streaming primetime TV shows for free
FlashInsider has a good writeup on how ABC really nailed their online video experience in their new online video player. The new Player represents Disney/ABC’s decision to offer their primetime programming for free.
The new site uses Flash Player 8 and its VP6 video codec as well as the Flash Media Server (FMS) via one of our Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS) partners.
Go watch your favorite ABC show and check out the Flash video experience here.
on 01 May 2006 at 2:30 pm 1.Chris Charlton said …
Yup, I dig.
on 01 May 2006 at 2:58 pm 2.Rodrigo Gomez-Tagle said …
Too bad for people that are not within the United States, I just tried to look this video player and I got a message saying “Only viewers within the United States can watch these full-length episodes” I am assuming the have some sort of IP sniffing to restrict their content.
on 01 May 2006 at 7:46 pm 3.JBR said …
Mike, the video is gorgeous-
what product are they using to encode it,
do you know?
on 01 May 2006 at 11:13 pm 4.Mike Downey said …
Hi JBR -
I believe they are using Flix from On2 but I could be wrong. Both Flix and Sorenson Squeeze (with On2 VP6 add-on) are great encoding tools.
MD
on 03 May 2006 at 9:53 pm 5.Gilbert Sanchez Jr said …
Hello Mike! I met your parents today. My dads company is doing some electrical work for them. I mentioned I was into computers and your mom told me to google you after she explained who you were. She was so proud to mention that you worked for Macromedia and Adobe. They got some big dogs lol
Anyways, ABC did a great job with the video. Making the ads show up will definetly make their sponsers happy. The video is so clean! Siiiick! lol
on 04 May 2006 at 10:46 am 6.Daniel Frome said …
I don’t mean to revisit an old topic, but I have encountered a big problem with Flash video, and I google’d up this website in search for a solution.
I am part of a new online video distribution company. We’re hitting the age old delema - Flash vs Windows Media. Yes, I know that this is a flash blog (I’m well aware of the bias). Forget all the “windows media isnt as compatible” stuff, I’m aware of that.
I guess I’m just a little upset — why doesn’t flash natively support full-screen mode? It also doesn’t seem to make use of the hardware acceleration features that Windows Media utilizes, which lets it view high definition content with relative ease.
I hope to god that Adobe is working on a solution… I’ve invested a lot of time and money into my flash player…and I’m slowly giving up, looking toward Windows Media to deliver the best user experience for video.
on 13 Jun 2006 at 6:24 am 7.Bob said …
Mike,
Do you know if this was a custom build top to bottom?
on 05 Jul 2006 at 12:47 am 8.cucu said …
stand-alone flash player that enables Flash Users to quickly browse the Macromedia Flash SWF files.
http://www.yaodownload.com/video_t/videoplayer/
on 20 Jul 2006 at 4:54 am 9.oliver said …
Hello,
I cannot watch the abc media player videos on my browser. I have XP home edition, IE6 and Flash Player 9. Which could be the problem?
on 22 Oct 2006 at 1:15 pm 10.rox said …
I hate to break it to you guys over ehre, but i also can’t watch the videos of full length tv shows on ABC television. the player hangs. it gets caught in a loop where when i start the show it jsut keeps repeating, “This episode of Ugly Betty brought to you by Dove chocolates” over and over and over. Tonight they took the little control bar that used to be there off, so that you can’t scroll backwards. i got about 1/3 the way through ugly betty and that was it, i get the messasage, “Loading…” and then nothing happens. This has been consistant, the videos jsut do not play well since I started watching i would say early september. It is very frustrating to not have the player work. I dont’ know what player CBS has but it is flawless. Worls every time, I can go to full screen. The video player is so bad on ABC I quit trying to watch most of the shows. I am sorry to tell this to you but the ABC Video player does not work and actually I only ever get it to work intermitantly.
on 27 Oct 2006 at 6:58 pm 11.cindy said …
I’m experiencing the same issues ROX is having. In the past few weeks, I’ve not been able to view ANY show I’ve tried, at ANY time. The player either hangs up after a few minutes or I get a “SERVER is NOT AVAILABLE” message. The player is suddenly useless. The CBS and NBC versions work every time. No matter how gorgeous the picture quality is–and it may very well be better than the others–it’s a moot point if one can’t watch it.
on 01 Nov 2006 at 4:49 pm 12.Laz said …
I am having the same problems as ROX. I am desparately trying to catch up on LOST. The ads always play fine for the full 30 seconds. The show gets reloaded at intervals and then the player just freezes. I have to relaunch the whole player page, watch the ads just to get 5 more minutes of playing time. Running Win XP Pro, P4 2.4 Ghz, 1 GB of ram.
on 06 Nov 2006 at 2:46 pm 13.Tony Twist said …
Hello, I’ve just upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 and cannot watch videos from ABC as usually using IE 6. The Lost sneak peaks for example. Is there a solution yet?
on 12 Nov 2006 at 2:38 pm 14.Kristin said …
Agree with the above, the player hangs quite a bit. It has the feel of a memory leak to me, but could be a bandwidth/resource issue. Happens in Firefox & IE.
The idea is excellent. Hope the they get the bugs worked out quickly or it’ll lose momentum and they’ll have to market it harder later. There are some great advertising opportunities in this. Interactive commercials that are primetime network quality…could do some sweet stuff with that.
on 27 Nov 2006 at 4:00 am 15.mj said …
I keep getting a message saying “Only viewers within the United States can watch the full length episodes” I am in the United States!!!! This is too frustrating!!
on 14 Jan 2007 at 12:55 am 16.OPPinoy said …
I’ve updated to IE7 and Adobe Flash Player 9, since Adobe bought Macromedia, and the ABC player doesn’t work for me neither. I think it has something to do with Flash Player 9, rather than IE7, because it stopped working before I updated to IE7. It used to work fine with my previous Flash player, but it won’t even load after I updated, and I can’t find how to go back to my previous version of Flash player.
[md] Are you connecting from within the US? I believe the ABC site is restricted to certain geographies. [/md]
on 17 Jan 2007 at 6:36 am 17.RonN said …
Does anyone have a fix for this?
I ran into this thread because I google searched “abc videos not working flash player”. I have reset all IE7 defaults, removed all ActiveX plugins, gone to Adobe’s website and installed their latest Flash player but continue to receive the message saying Flash 8 player required?!? Downgraded to v8 and the same message appears
on 02 Feb 2007 at 8:07 am 18.blasian said …
Yeah well I just want to view the lastest Grey’s but it won’t even play that beginning of “This episode is brought to you by…” It just stays on “loading…” Every other episode works just fine, its just this one that won’t play at all.
on 16 Feb 2007 at 8:27 pm 19.sunshine said …
Having similar problems with abc shows. Keep getting a screen that says Loading… Sometimes it plays intermittently…but most of the time I get Loading… or Unavailable at this time due to commercials not being availabe or something to that affect. Very frustrating when trying to catch up on Grey’s Anatomy. They need to fix this. There is no reason it should not run on my computer….why doesn’t it work?
on 21 Feb 2007 at 4:13 pm 20.David Bush said …
Are you all mad? THE ABC PLAYER DOESN’T EVEN USE HALF OF THE SCREEN. People spend big bucks for the biggest screen they can get and then this player wastes morethan half the screen! WMP, Real, Itunes. Everyone else gets this except FLASH. Seriously. What can they be thinking?
[MD] Hi, David. Actually, we just added the ability to make Flash video go fullscreen with a recent update to Flash Player 9. My guess is that ABC isn’t ready to target that version of the Player. Also, it’s quite typical for web video to be presented in non-fullscreen resolutions. It’s not that the technology doesn’t support it (Flash video has always let you make your videos fill the browser) but that there’s a trade off in quality vs bandwidth. If you make video look good at fullscreen, you need to deliver more bits to the end user. My guess is that the traffice to ABC.com didn’t have the kind of bandwidth needed to deliver that sort of experience. [/MD]
on 08 Mar 2007 at 11:16 am 21.Patricia Dahlin said …
I found this by looking for “abc video player not working. I see that a lot of other people have the same problem, but have not seen solutions. Does anyone have the solution? I tried updating my flash player.
Thanks
on 13 May 2007 at 8:07 pm 22.kat said …
ok so my player worked fun up until they came up with the new full screen version. no episodes work and i keep getting a message that tells me that the advertisements are unavailable. what’s up with that? is there something i can do? a setting that needs changed? or is it just totally ghetto? someone help. I need my anatomy and my d house. thanks
on 24 May 2007 at 12:33 pm 23.DMC said …
MD sure seems as if you like to think you know everything. That however is obviously not true since you were only able to answer like two of the questions posed on your little blog.
on 26 May 2007 at 8:57 am 24.jame said …
Lost use to work with the old player but…….there isnt a link for the old player anymore……..what happend….to it………………..the new player never worked for me….and i have flash player 9
on 26 May 2007 at 11:36 pm 25.ali said …
HELP! Is there any old link to see this? I have left a ton of messages on their “speak with a tech” link but nothing…If only the old link was still there with the old player…I’ve missed critical episodes…ie the last episode of Bachelor!!
I have tiger but Load load load…then nothing. Anyone know a trick?
on 30 May 2007 at 2:41 am 26.Doug39a said …
The problem is most likely a Windows patch. I have five machines, all played fine, all failed in turn as I installed the latest round of MS security patches.
I’m running XP Pro SP2. ABC will eventually fix their problem. After all they are smart.
on 01 Jun 2007 at 8:29 am 27.rafe said …
I have the same problem loading up ABC shows… sent ABC a feedback email just now, and this is the response I got…
“I will be out of the office on 5/30 and 5/31 with limited access to my email. Please contact the ABC Tech alias for any emergency.”
It is from: Giuseppe.Manzari@dig.com
HELLO??? it’s June 1… and what is “tech alias”?
on 03 Jun 2007 at 6:20 pm 28.Erinity said …
I have the same issues with ABC.COM, which is really annoying. Any resolve on the issue with the Flash player? Mine just sits on a blank screen when I go to full episodes…. ERRRRRRRRRRRR
Erinity
on 14 Jun 2007 at 12:53 pm 29.csguzman said …
I to am not able to use the new ABC player. I have also e-mailed tech support with no responce. this is not only effecting my not so busy work day but my co-workers as well. please some one help. is there no back door to this site?
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on 17 Sep 2007 at 12:25 pm 32.Myl said …
I have tried both Firefox and IE, even though the movenetwork test works perfectly:
http://movenetworks.com/support/renderer.html
I still can only watch the commercial and the screen just says loading…
The new season is approaching and I’m anxious to get this working so I can catch up.
Is the a resolution yet?
Or maybe a link to the old player?
on 01 Nov 2007 at 8:57 am 33.Blog Comment Poster said …
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on 26 Nov 2007 at 11:15 am 34.Rick said …
Video in flashplayer freezes after 2 sec, no sound. Seems alot of people have this problem. Haven’t found any answers that work yet.
on 25 Jan 2008 at 7:08 am 35.Gene Smith said …
The player works with the commercial at the beginning but never plays the actual show. It just sits there and never starts the show.
on 09 Feb 2008 at 9:07 am 36.jason said …
I too have experienced the “Loading…” situation since they began putting the HD episodes on their site. I’ve contacted ABC’s IT department about making the old player available for those who are having issues with the new player but I never heard back and that was in October of 07 (it’s now Feb of 08). I hate the fact that the commercials play just fine…talk about inflated impression numbers for those advertisers…
on 13 Sep 2008 at 6:15 pm 37.Rachel said …
I have been experiencing a problem with watching ABC.com full episodes of video. The video and the audio is okay for a minute and then both bleep in and out of working. Can anyone help? I have watched episodes before on my computer. I use high speed wireless internet and I have an old Mac iBook… I don’t know where the problem lies… any suggestions?
on 27 Sep 2008 at 6:12 am 38.Martha Evans said …
I can’t get their full episode player to do anything. It opens as a blank gray screen and that’s it.
on 28 Sep 2008 at 4:38 pm 39.jo anne said …
I can’t get the ABC player to work either. Keep getting message I need to upgrade but when I click to upgrade explorer crashes. I don’t know why ABC can’t use a simple stream like USA does.
on 30 Sep 2008 at 6:25 am 40.Bridget said …
HELP! ABC’s player USED to be amazing with only a few times of instability….I’ve watched a show on ABC’s full episode player at LEAST once a week for the past year. I am very upset because I can’t watch the season premiere of Grey’s and I recently started watching Lost (seasons 1-4.5) and now can’t watch anything as of early September-ever since ABC announced a “new player.”
Why fix something thats not broken!? All this player does is say loading and then crash my Mozilla. I have the most updated flash, xp, and a one yr old computer with a great processor and graphics card…i’m so confused! My roommate and I tried to view on her 1 yr old Dell with Vista and we could watch SOME of the show, but it is choppy, the sound doesn’t match the picture, and it freezes up from time to time.
HELP US!
on 30 Sep 2008 at 2:50 pm 41.Melanie said …
Ever since ABC announced their “new” player, I haven’t been able to use it either. It either crashes my brower or I get an error message. I use the latest version of Internet Explorer so I wouldn’t expect any problems. I used to watch all of the Grey’s Anatomy and Lost episodes and this is really upsetting! I have emailed ABC support about this too and haven’t received a reply
on 01 Oct 2008 at 5:03 pm 42.Dave said …
Maybe this is ABCs way of making sure we only watch on TV, never online. ABCs viewer was great until mid September when it had me download the new and improved player, only to never work again! I guess it’s CBS and NBC online until ABC goes back to what worked great before.
on 02 Oct 2008 at 10:01 am 43.Suzanne said …
Agree completely with #35. Mine continues to do the same thing no matter what I try. Used to work flawlessly, immediately. No more. What’s going on?
on 03 Oct 2008 at 5:14 pm 44.Kim said …
I sent them an email and this is the reply I got
TECHNICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FULL EPISODE PLAYER:
–We suggest you send technical questions about the full episode player DIRECTLY to the ABC.com technical staff:
Go to ABC.com
Go to the top and click on “full episodes”
Choose the name of the show you want to view
Go to top of that page and click on “help
on 06 Oct 2008 at 2:54 am 45.Imran Sheikh said …
When I click ‘Watch New Episode’ and/or name of a show to watch, it opens a new window with the ABC circle, the circle does not revolve, and suddenly my internet expolorer crashes, and reopens quickly.
I’ve restarted my PC, cleared cache, unblock pop-ups; still a no-go! Help appreciated!
on 06 Oct 2008 at 12:32 pm 46.Ginger said …
I can’t see the controls for the new ABC Full Episode player. I can’t pause or any of those things.
I can see the picture fine, but there’s no way for me to pause it.
on 12 Oct 2008 at 9:21 am 47.Lonely Tourist said …
Mine stalls in video and audio every few minutes. I’ve been googling and trying various things to get it to work, but have so far been unsuccessful.
on 12 Oct 2008 at 2:38 pm 48.Jon said …
Who’d u payoff for the gd reviews;this player is junk.Stuck @ loading also.
on 13 Oct 2008 at 4:18 pm 49.Shay said …
It looks like everyone else is pretty much having the same problems that I am w/ ABC’s flash player- when is ABC going to get the picture?! (literally)
I have sent so many feedback forms to them (like others), you’d think that they’d get the hint that there’s something wrong w/ their player, not everyones computer. If I wanted to watch a pretty circle going ’round and ’round, I have a 4 year old who loves to color– I’d like to watch the shows that I usually enjoy.